a) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a packaged pair of casual shoes, each shoe of said pair comprising a sole portion and an upper portion, wherein the pair of shoes is packaged in a novel manner. The invention is primarily concerned with relatively flexible casual shoes such as flip-flops, moccasins, indoor slippers and the like.
b) Description of the Prior Art
Casual shoes such as flip-flops are very well known and generally comprise a sole portion together with an upper portion attached to the sole portion and which upper portion may take a variety of forms. In the case of a flip-flop, at its simplest the upper portion may comprise a simple strap extending from both sides of the instep region of the sole portion and conjoining to a toe post intended to lie between the big and first toes of the wearer's foot. Flip-flops with more extensive upper portions are also known, wherein the upper portion extends over a greater area of the wearer's instep but those flip-flops still have a toe post which is intended to pass between the toes of the wearer's foot.
Moccasin shoes generally have a sole portion which curves round the edge of a wearer's foot and has an upper portion stitched to that sole portion. Indoor (carpet) slippers may also have a similar construction to either flip-flops or moccasin shoes, again with a sole portion and an upper portion stitched thereto.
Casual shoes of the kind described above tend to be relatively low value and so often are not displayed for sale in a particularly attractive manner. Given that the profit on such casual shoes may be small, many retailers do not wish to present those products at the forefront of a display and so the presentation of the products to customers often is equally casual. The consequence is that a retailer may sell many fewer pairs of casual shoes than otherwise could be the case, were the shoes displayed in a more pleasing and attractive manner to the customers.
It is a principal object of this invention to provide a novel packaged pair of casual shoes, which enables the presentation of the shoes in a different and attractive way, whereby a display of the packaged shoes is more likely to result in increased sales of those shoes.
It is a further object of this invention to provide packaged casual shoes in such a way that the costs of packaging are much reduced as compared to the use of conventional shoe boxes of other materials such as cardboard.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide packaged casual shoes which require no other packaging materials once presented for display or when taken from a shop following purchase by a customer.